Wightpocalypse

[Angelalex242]

What level PC party would be needed to make the famous wightpocalypse a valid plotline?

Assume there's about 1000 wights to start, and every village they take down just adds that much more to their numbers.

[Gemini476]

Valid in what way? Starting it (or something similar) can be done at level three as a Wizard with Fell Drain Sonic Snap, but I'm unsure at what level you could stop it.
Ask yourself what level an invading Orc horde is appropriate for and you have a decent estimate. Wights are intelligent, after all. Although they generally don't advance via class levels like Orcs do, so yeah. Then again, the average Wight is stronger than the average Orc and the Wightocalypse is self-sustaining.

Whatever level, make sure that the PCs have access to Restoration of some sort but probably not immunity to negative levels.

[OldTrees1]

For the PCs to stop a Wightpocalypse, the PCs need to kill Wights faster than 1000 Wights create more Wights. If they can manage that then their job gets easier over time.

So if a Wightpocalyse increases in population by 50% per day, the PCs need to be able to slay 501 Wights in a single day.

As a random guess: Perhaps 11th level?

[Jack_Simth]

What level PC party would be needed to make the famous wightpocalypse a valid plotline?

This aspect can be done at any level. It's just a matter of "how many to start", "How far away they are", "how much warning do you have", "how dense is the population centre where the wights start out" and similar. 1st level works, potentially, if you line everything else up correctly.

Assume there's about 1000 wights to start, and every village they take down just adds that much more to their numbers.
Still way, way to many other things to assume to give a straight answer.

[Angelalex242]

Alright. PCs are fighting the wights. There are at least 1000 of them because they've desolated a few towns already by the time the PCs are called in.

They start at town X, and are moving towards the capital city of Y, where there's something like 30,000 people. If they get into Capital City Y, it's essentially game over.

Villages A, B, and C are between X and Y. They have 1000, 2000, and 5000 people in them.

The PCs are supposed to stop this and minimize civilian casualties as best they can.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

It really depends on whether or not you want to be throwing overwhelming numbers of undead at them. If so, then I'd say at least 7th level, high enough for a Cleric to cast Restoration and with Improved Turning or an Ephod of Authority he can destroy wights with a normal turn undead. If not, I'd say around 5th or so, but you would need to be careful of wiping characters down to 1st-2nd level with negative levels unless they're all somehow immune (Necropolitan or Warforged).

Also, be wary of someone trying to use Command Undead on one of the first generation of wights to instantly gain a wight army, considering that through it they would control any that it created, and any that those created, and so forth.

I actually ran a game like this quite a while back. It was set in the Tippyverse, and the PCs were the first generation born to the survivors of a megacity that was destroyed by a Wightpocalypse. The city's Warforged and Shadesteel Golem guardians were still standing strong, and recognized all the wights as citizens of the city in need of protection! Needless to say, they weren't able to even enter the ruins of that city until they were decently high level, which meant they didn't have access to the resources of any of the great cities until they could reach one of the portal rooms.

[HighWater]

Villages A, B, and C are between X and Y. They have 1000, 2000, and 5000 people in them.

The PCs are supposed to stop this and minimize civilian casualties as best they can.

Well, Wights are a CR 3 threat when taken individually.

Lvl1 PC's start slaughtering the villagers in Village A, growing up to level 9 (assuming 4 PCs). Now they can start curbstomping any wight they see...

If they want to ensure victory, they also slaughter Village B, bringing them up to level 14, where wights won't pose much of a threat at all...


In all seriousness:
It highly depends on the populationdensity the wights can use to spread the infection. Sparsely populated land will ensure the problem will escalate much less quickly.
It also highly depends on the resistance the wights face from the local population as well as the wildlife/magiclife roaming the countryside.

Also, slaughtering wights and only wights will become pretty boring pretty fast, especially once it becomes easy.
If you want to introduce the wightpocalypse as a plot, I'd suggest moving it at the speed of... plot. At least sorta kinda, because exponential things tend to really explode and at the start, a dozen more or less wights can make a whole lot of difference in the long run. In a game that knows chance the way DnD does, one off-day of the PCs early in the campagin can turn it into a very impossible mission.

You can introduce the PCs at the point where a single wight makes for a level-appropriate encounter, but I'd suggest keeping the Wight number considerably lower at the starting point. At the point where 1000 Wights are stoppable by a single adventuring party, it's also very BORING to hunt 1000 Wights...

[Grayson01]

Well, Wights are a CR 3 threat when taken individually.

Lvl1 PC's start slaughtering the villagers in Village A, growing up to level 9 (assuming 4 PCs). Now they can start curbstomping any wight they see...

If they want to ensure victory, they also slaughter Village B, bringing them up to level 14, where wights won't pose much of a threat at all...

Is it wrong that my first thoughts were this is a perfectly viable method of dealing with preventing the Wights from becoming a major threat? Like a fire break....

[Angelalex242]

Maybe I should state a couple other stipulations.

The Wightpocalypse will be thrown onto PCs who aren't specifically prepared to go undead busting. That is, the cleric won't necessarily have extra turning, they won't be armed to the teeth with phylacteries of undead turning and soulfire armor.